Micheal had always wondered what everyone had meant when they spoke of having an ‘intimate’ understanding of the way their apostle worked and how to use it. He could never grasp the idea that someone chosen by a God like Nero-Un could just accept the idea of having an extra tentacle arm and possess full and complete knowledge of how to use the briny thing.

It was trying to punch the smug face of the boy in front of him that allowed this idea to finally settle into his mind as it had for everyone else on the planet and beyond that had access to an apostle since the day of their birth. Micheal knew that sending his concentration down to his hand and focusing on what he wanted his apostle to do would allow him to control the crystal’s growth.

He knew that, in its current state, his crystallized bones and organs were no more sturdy than at their base form, but the crystal he could grow on the exterior of his body would be ‘different’. He wasn’t sure exactly how he knew, though he suspected it to be the same way he had known to grow crystal on his hand in the first place. Others called this the power of the Gods; to know one's own ability was said to be a God's way of telling their chosen how to be of use to it, which Micheal absolutely believed up until that point.

What changed his mind was his own circumstance. As a chosen of the elder Gods, Micheal was never going to receive their attention from the outset. By their very nature, the Gods were fickle and onery - none more so than the old Gods - but the elder Gods were a different breed of fickle entirely.

As they were said to be more akin to forces of nature than sentient beings, they would not care for Micheal and his use of their gifts any more than Micheal would care about crushing an ant. He was too far beneath their notice. It brought into question not only why they had chosen him, but also where his knowledge came from.

All of that mattered little in the current moment, however. Micheal hadn’t fought an even fight in a while, thanks to the fear he brought to the lower hall, so when the cocky boy dodged below his fist and sent a blow of his own to Micheal’s jaw before he could react, it was Micheal that was sent flying.

His feet lifted from the ground as he was thrown backward by the sheer staggering force employed in the lazy throw that the boy had sent him. The cheek that the fist had hit went cold and numb as Micheal made contact with the wooden floor of the first hall and slid painfully along it. The damage the floor did was generally negligible, despite painfully tearing some of the skin from his face and leaving small splinters in his arms, legs, and face. That meant that, while already reeling from the shock at the power of the punch, Micheal was unaffected.

Not feeling the right side of his face and with a ringing still in one ear, Micheal rose to the floor with a solemn look. He glanced and the smarmy boy in front of him, who looked incredulously at him as he rose to his feet, and he shot him a glare of pure poison. Disdain and pity were what Micheal tried to convey to the boy, and it looked like it had riled him up just enough to send him charging with his chin out.

Micheal focused on his left hand until crystal coalesced onto it, before squaring up to the boy charging at him with reckless abandon. He put his left foot forward and feigned a left jab as the boy got in close, where he ducked to avoid the crystalline hand that might have caused some damage.

This caused him to run straight into the uppercut that Micheal had set up, rocking his jaw and sending him to his knees. Micheal took advantage and laced his foot in crystal before kicking the boy in the stomach as hard as possible, causing him to let out a shrill wheeze as his body collapsed onto the floor.

He followed through with three more swift crystal-imbued kicks to the boy's head, and one more to his stomach when it looked like he might be getting up. The other kids watching might have thought Micheal was being overly brutal, but the truth was that he was doing exactly what he needed to come out of this without being beaten to near death.

Unless Micheal ensured the boy didn’t get up, he would be the one taking a savage beating. It was only the surprise at being hit with Micheal’s un-anointed right hand that had sent the boy to the floor. The blow itself had done little else to the boy's constitution than shake him a little bit. It was the crystal-imbued kicks to his body and head that had done the damage.

Thus came the swift conclusion to the bloody and epic battle.

While the endurance and survivability of an earth ranker were higher than Micheal’s own bone-ranked attributes, it would be nowhere near the increase they had in strength. An earth ranker wasn’t much more durable than a normal human, at least compared to their strength. If Micheal had allowed the boy to use his apostle on him, the fight would have gone very differently.

Continuing to place kicks into the boy’s now unconscious body did allow him to scare the other kids a little bit. He hoped that the sight of his bloody shoes and the blood splatterings on his grey orphan’s pants would stay with the others enough that they wouldn’t bother him in the near future.

As Micheal leveled one more crystal-imbued kick to the boy’s head, a small, shy girl walked out from the onlooking crowd. She looked worriedly at the boy’s unconscious body and then more confidently into Micheal’s eyes. “I think he’s had enough,” she said. Micheal had expected her voice to tremble as she did, but it was a stern and commanding tone that he heard, without a hint of worry or hesitance. She had commanded, and she expected to be obeyed.

“I think the one who’s currently doing the skull-kicking gets to make that decision,” he said curtly. He wouldn’t show any weakness in front of those watching vultures. He knew they were just waiting for a chance to see him earn his due, and he knew to the deep blue that there was no way he’d give them the satisfaction of seeing it done. Truthfully, he would rather have died.

“Well I think the one doing the kicking is a sea slug bastard who should learn what mercy looks like,” she said, glaring a hole into Micheal’s eyes. Hers was a stare that could burn a hole right into a soul, and he could only return one of his own in response. “And maybe, while he’s at it, he could learn some of Nero-Un’s own manners. A merciless bastard like you ought to at least apologize to the rest of us for starting all this in the middle of the hall, directly outside of our class,” she finished, exhaling a light breath that he hadn’t expected him to notice.

She continued staring him down, her eyes like the accusing stares of a mob; judgment and accusation made stone. Micheal felt them as physical weights, and could only stand in awe of the girl’s tenacity.

Despite that, It was her clear attempt at hiding her discomfort that did the most for his opinion of her. He could care less for her moral scruples, as she and every one of the first haller’s would have watched Micheal be beaten to death less than a week ago for nothing more than the entertainment value of it. It was a similar attitude that the Gods took to the world, and that was a thought that Made Micheal furious.

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It was her tenacity that appealed to Micheal, however. He could at least respect someone for pushing their boundaries to do what they thought was right. “Well, his brain should be approaching mush now anyway. Do me a favor and take him to the healer, would you, Miss saint? He’s awfully injured,” Micheal said as he turned to leave. The sentiment of the crowd would turn quickly from silent bewilderment to hostile action if he tarried too long. It only took one upstanding ‘holier-than-thou’ son of a bitch before the crowd learned to grow a conscience. Without one he could have beaten the kid to death, but that annoying girl had to play the hero.

At least it was someone with some guts, he figured.

Micheal, with his torn and bloody face, left behind the girl and the crowd as they began jeering at his back.

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Samantha wiped the blood from her broken nose and the splatterings from her face and arms. She must have made a grisly sight walking down the corridor to her rooms, covered from head to toe in viscous red blood from the two broken noses during her fight, and smiling ear to ear all the while.

By the time she arrived in her room, the adulation had worn off for the most part, but she kept up the smile in hopes that it would un-nerve some of the people on the way. Even if it didn’t, Samantha was more than happy to deal with anyone who thought she was powerless. In fact, it was her pleasure to do so.

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Catherine Mauser walked out of the crowd celebrating her deed to find somewhere to recuperate. After seeing the torn and ripped face of the lost boy she had nearly run screaming, and after realizing he was kicking the already unconscious Mark while he was on the ground prone, she didn’t even realize she had done something before it was too late.

Her entire body shook with the stress and nervous energy she had accumulated in her brief time as Mark’s savior, and all of it leaked out of her as she made her way back to her room. She felt like crying more than anything.

She hoped she would never have to do anything like that again.

______________________________

On his way back to his room, Micheal reflected on today’s gains. Beating the random cocky boy was nothing special, if a little bit lucky, but it didn’t do much for telling him how powerful the rest of the first hall was. It was slightly telling that even someone on the lower average end of the spectrum could have curshed him with only minimum effort on their part, but he still felt he couldn’t quite understand it.

It was like when he heard the stories of the platinum rankers that supposedly lived in the largest cities. Men and women that could tear the ground asunder like it was nothing. It was said that once someone reached iron they could fly, and at silver, you could lift mountains.

Anything above platinum rank lived mostly in myth and legend. It was a rumor among the orphans that there was once an ex-resident who had made it to gold before the time of the First King, but Micheal didn’t put too much stock into that.

Archpriests and world priests were so rare that it was believed that none were still alive on the continent, despite their increased vitality.

He knew that those in the higher ranks had to be incredibly powerful, but the most powerful he had ever seen were the stone ranks that some of the elder priests boasted with pride. Vanriel, for example, was among them. As for the orphans, the strongest among them were only in the very earliest stages of stone rank, but they were considered akin to a God in the confines of the church and its dormitories.

Deep in thought, Micheal didn’t even see the person he had bumped into getting sent flying to the ground. That was the second time in as many days that had happened. Maybe Micheal needed to do less thinking while walking. He blamed the small corridors.

“Shit. sorry about that. Do you need a hand getting up,” Micheal offered to the boy on the floor. He was average in height, but that made him a giant in comparison to Micheal, but he wasn’t particularly intimidating.

“No, I think I’ll be quite alright without the help from scum like you,” he said with perfect kindness in his voice. It was so great a contrast that Micheal had to pull a double take at the smiling boy’s face before he saw it. “What? Are you lot in the bone ranks dumb as well as useless? Go away before I put an end to that useless life for the glory of the Gods,” he finished without his voice being anything ever than perfect and unassuming kindness. It was honestly creepy to hear such venom come from the mouth of the smiling and innocent boy.

What Micheal take him seriously was the wooden token on the boy’s collar; a sign that he had reached earth rank by the standards of the registration office. Bone rank was considered unimportant enough not to need its own token, but once someone reached earth rank, it was considered good form to show one’s ranking for others to see, even if only to stop people from picking fights that weren’t worth their time.

“Go ahead and try you useless sea cucu-” Micheal didn’t finish his sentence before a blazing pain shot up his right hand and into his body. Immediately he let out an anguished cry that was silenced as an enormous force crashed against his jaw. Micheal had never even seen the prim and proper boy move, but already he was standing above Micheal. Wait, when had he fallen over? Why was the ground spinning? He must have had one too many drinks with Samantha again.

He could barely make out the form of the boy above him, holding Micheal severed finger in his hand. “I’ll be keeping this a souvenir, I think. It will be a good reminder for you not to antagonize your betters, don’t you think?”

Micheal heard it, but it was so very distant. Even the pain from his severed finger and likely broken jaw were distant. Everything was so far away that it didn’t matter. Micheal just wanted to go to sleep.

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After Samantha had gotten home and cleaned the blood off of herself, she sat down to pray to the Gods. technically it was still early for that, so she wouldn’t get any stronger, but that mattered little with her being lost. She could pray whenever she liked, as she couldn’t gain power even at the right time. The Gods had long since forsaken her.

She prayed that Micheal would be ok, of course. If his time in the first hall was anything like his time in the lower hall, he would already have gotten in three fights by now. Knowing him, he would have lost all three of them, at least at the start.

He was a tiny freaking kid, even at sixteen he was barely taller than some of the twelve-year-olds. He was small and he knew it more than most. Despite that, he had conquered the lower hall by besting even the biggest and most dangerous in a fair fight. Some of them had been twice his size before he brought them to their knees. That was just the way that Micheal was though, brutal and stubborn.

She always respected that about him.

________________________________

Semi-conscious, with a missing index finger on his right hand and a broken jaw, Micheal looked at the retreating form of the boy’s back, and he glared hatred. Pure fury showed in his abyssal eyes, and the mark of the fair turned red as he did. The line in his eye went from a pure and healing white to a deep and savage red.

He could never beat the boy as he was now, but that didn’t matter. He didn’t even think about beating him as he crawled after the boy, much as he had done on the morning of his confrontation with Aryth. This time there would be no intervention of the elder Gods to save him, but that was alright. Micheal had toyed with death to win a fight more times than one. He would chase the boy to the ends of the planet and back, even if it killed him.

So it was that once more, Micheal, chosen of the elder Gods, crawled broken and bruised across the floor to a certain death.

He pushed on until his consciousness left him, and upon the floor of the first hall, his unconscious form was found. The two girls that found him would have sworn his body still tried to move in the direction of the end of the hall, and anyone that knew Micheal knew that even unconsciousness would not be enough to stop him once he had his heart set on something. Especially if that something happened to be starting a fight.